2014-15: ECOL: The Physical Ecology of Organism Mixing and Dispersal in Fluids: March 16-18, 2015

Description

While numerous studies have considered dispersal mechanisms and modeling in specific taxonomic groups and ecosystems, there remains little understanding of their unifying physical principles. Furthermore, the trade-off between simplifying assumptions and robustness of the mathematical models and associated data used to develop them has been given limited consideration. In this workshop, we began to address this limitation by linking long distance dispersal across air- and water-dwelling organisms and pathogens to their shared mechanical and mathematical frameworks.

We focused our consideration on mathematical connections including fluid dynamics, stochastic processes, dispersal kernels, dynamical networks, and Bayesian approaches to model development and parameterization. We discussed background on specific biological systems, along with associated model development and validation. Significant time was also devoted to a discussion of future challenges in understanding long distance dispersal influenced by fluid physics, including: (i) modeling techniques to connect dynamics at various spatial and temporal scales; (ii) data collection protocols and data accessibility; (iii) dynamic networks and network parameterization; and (iv) code generation that is well-documented and generally applicable. Specific applications we considered were (i) the dispersal of thrips and parasitoid wasps in air, (ii) the transmission of invasive species through shipping networks, and (iii) the transmission of pathogens through violent respiratory events.